MGMT’s mammoth debut record Oracular Spectacular was released ten years ago today. Celebrate with these ten fun facts!

 

1. When Columbia Records approached the band with a record deal, they thought it was a joke.

2.  Promotion for the album began when copies of the first single “Weekend Wars” were released free of charge in the pop culture magazine Nöjesguiden in Stockholm, Sweden.

3. Just before the band made it big with “Electric Feel”, guitarist Hank Sullivant left the band.

4. In 2009, Rolling Stone magazine listed the album as #18 on their list of the best albums of the decade.

5. “Time To Pretend”‘s b-side “Metanoia” is a 14-minute track inspired psychologist Carl Jung and his psychoanalytic theory called Metanoia.

 

6. “Time To Pretend” was inspired by a praying mantis.

“We wrote Time to Pretend our senior year of college, and the music was inspired by a praying mantis we had in our house. She laid eggs and it died, and we laid the egg case on this kinda model pirate ship on the mantle piece, and the eggs hatched and all these baby praying mantises were climbing up the rigging of the ship, and it was pretty crazy…uhm so the music was inspired by our praying mantis that liked to dance to The Clash and the lyrics are just about us imagining being rock stars….and yeah, fantasy rock star life.”

 

7. The music video contains references to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film The Holy Mountain and the classic book Lord of the Flies.

 

8. “Electric Feel” had a resurgence three years after its release because of The Voice.

 

9. The album’s success led the band to gigs opening for Radiohead, M.I.A., Beck and more.

10. After the former President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, used the song “Kids” during a political conference, the band took legal action against him saying that the compensation he offered was “insulting” for his illegal use of the song.

 

 

Filed under: MGMT, Oracular Spectacular